


we who have been frozen

by wayslide



Category: Dreaming of Sunshine - Silver Queen
Genre: Ambiguous/Open Ending, Body Horror, Character Death, Gen, implied kakagai, no happy endings here
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-08-30
Updated: 2020-08-30
Packaged: 2021-03-07 00:33:21
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,260
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/26188018
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/wayslide/pseuds/wayslide
Summary: Minato had been prepared to grieve Obito and Rin. He had not been prepared to grieve his first student, his tiny, dedicated genius so disenchanted and disparaging of the world, practically begging for anyone to prove his disdain for the world wrong.(Set directly aftertears are not required - Meimu Uchiha.)
Relationships: Namikaze Minato & Uchiha Meimu
Comments: 11
Kudos: 141
Collections: Heliocentrism — a Dreaming of Sunshine recursive collection





	we who have been frozen

**Author's Note:**

> I read Reincarnation Roulette like eight times and then started writing this as a writing warm-up…and it really got away from me. I suspect some people might be expecting this to be funny, which is indeed my usual game, but uh… This is really sad and dark. Please be warned.

Meimu had found him after Team 7 had passed his bell test. Minato had been happy to see her, at the time. She had become something like a ghost around that time. Sometimes he would see her at the corners of his vision, but she was always gone by the time he turned his head. He'd suspected she was ANBU. Now, as Hokage, he knew.

"So, they passed," she'd said. Her face was a blank tranquil sea. Minato could never tell what she was thinking. He hadn't liked to consider why she had learned that skill. Orochimaru had been Jiraiya's best friend and former teammate, but he'd made Minato's skin crawl. He wouldn't consider his complicity in it all until later, when Orochimaru was already gone and they learned the full extent of his…research.

"Yes," Minato remembered himself saying. "They show much promise."

Meimu had nodded, slowly. "I will be watching," she'd said, and then was gone. Minato had not seen her again until weeks later. He remembered the humming tension in his body until she'd reappeared, blank-faced as usual, and said nothing about his team. He'd taken that as implicit approval of his teaching and relaxed, just a little, because he had thought that her words were a warning to him: _take care of my little brother_. He had thought it strangely reassuring that she could feel something as pedestrian as worry for a sibling, terrifying as it had been.

Now, as he stepped into the clearing that held the three unmoving bodies of his former students and a blank-faced Meimu, he wondered.

Rin was dead. Kakashi had been torn apart. Yet the blood that soaked the ground most thoroughly was Obito's.

Obito, whose limp head lay in Meimu's lap as she gazed down at her little brother, cradling his face in a parody of a loving sibling in grief. She held a kunai in one hand. From where he stood, Minato could see that his eye sockets were empty.

She knew Minato was there. He knew she knew.

Meimu did not run.

Minato did not attack.

After a long, tense moment, Meimu put her kunai away. "Hokage-sama," she said. Gently, she lowered Obito's head to settle upon her thighs and absently stroked the hair from his face.

He nearly lost his composure at the cool apathy in her voice, but contained himself. "Report, Meimu Uchiha." The flinty steel in his own voice startled him a little.

Flatly, Meimu gave her report. "Obito Uchiha attempted to flee with the sleeper agent Rin Nohara after she was revealed. Kakashi Hatake followed in pursuit. He killed the sleeper agent. The Uchiha traitor activated the Sharingan and killed Hatake." Minato could not fully suppress his shudder. "The traitor then attacked me." Now Meimu looked at him, her gaze dark and clear and unwavering. "So I killed him."

Gods. One of his students, a Kiri spy hidden right under his nose. Another, an Uchiha no less, turned traitor for love. The politics of this one was going to consume Minato's life for _weeks_ at the very least. The effects would be long-lasting and far-reaching. Whether Konoha weathered it was all in Minato's hands.

There was no time for grief. Ninja entered their service knowing that every mission might be their last, and this was not the first time Minato had weighed the scales of possibility and discovered that the odds had turned against him. He had sent Kakashi because he had known his students; Obito was a good shinobi, good enough to cover Kakashi's back if he needed it, good enough to protect Rin if she needed to heal someone, but not good enough to survive Kakashi Hatake, son of the White Fang, Minato's student since he was six. He had not considered what Obito might be capable of when backed into a corner, driven into anguished revenge.

Minato had been prepared to grieve Obito and Rin. He had not been prepared to grieve his first student, his tiny, dedicated genius so disenchanted and disparaging of the world, practically begging for anyone to prove his disdain for the world wrong.

Just last week Kakashi had been in his house, clutching the tea Kushina had served him, and with a great number of starts and stops, managed to mutter, "I think I have terrible taste in men." He'd shrunk in on himself, his eyes watchful and posture tense with readiness like he was waiting for recrimination and was prepared to defend himself against it no matter what form it came in.

Minato had been shocked, less because it was a man and more because he'd come to think that Kakashi would never show that kind of interest in another human being. "You do?" he'd said, like an idiot.

Kushina's burst of laughter had made him startle, and then she'd slammed her palm onto the table so hard that it cracked slightly in protest, but held. None of them even blinked at that; it was the fifth time for that table alone. "Doofus!" Then she had leaned forwards over the doomed table towards Kakashi and said gleefully, "If it's that Maito kid, Mikoto owes me 50 ryo."

The way Kakashi flushed and sank down in his chair had been a confession in and of itself. "He's the most uncool person in Konoha," he'd grumbled unhappily.

"No, kid," Kushina had said. "That's still Minato." And they'd both turned to smirk at him.

Kushina would weep when Minato told her.

He didn't want to imagine what Gai might do.

"You watched it all," Minato realized, an unfurling of horrible understanding. "You… When did you…"

Meimu held his gaze. "The traitor came to me when he was made aware that Kakashi was in pursuit."

Minato was speechless for a moment. "Why didn't you help?" he croaked. "You…"

She looked down at the dead boy. "Just like you," Meimu said, apropos of nothing, her voice thoughtful. She touched Obito's cheek, smearing blood across his skin. Then she lifted her head to meet Minato's gaze again, her voice cold. "The only freedom is in strength. I gave him a chance. He couldn't save her. He wasn't strong enough. Not until she was already gone." 

Minato turned her words over in his head. She had let Obito go; maybe helped him, even. But she hadn't tried to stop Kakashi from following them. She had watched Kakashi kill Rin and done nothing. She had watched Obito kill Kakashi and done nothing.

She had killed Obito when he had attacked her, but would she have let him go if he hadn't?

As Hokage, it fell to him to be judge and jury. Was she a traitor? Why had she done any of this? He realized suddenly that he knew nothing about this woman who had killed her brother. He hadn't wanted to, though he had allowed himself to imagine a bond based on a shared experience of learning from legends.

"I think I could have loved him, maybe," Meimu mused suddenly, tracing fingers over Obito's still brow. "Before. When I was someone else." A look of true sadness flickered across her face before it was swallowed by the usual placidity. She looked at Minato. "Do you believe me?"

"I don't know," he said honestly.

She nodded, like she wasn't surprised by his answer. "Will you kill me?"

Minato spared a look at Rin, at Kakashi. Back to Obito. Back to Meimu watching him and not bothering to run. "I don't know," he said again.

"I see," Meimu said, and closed her eyes.


End file.
